


Glimpses of days past

by abstractionofentities



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games)
Genre: Drama, Friendship, M/M, Romance, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-18
Updated: 2019-07-21
Packaged: 2020-07-07 16:54:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19855711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abstractionofentities/pseuds/abstractionofentities
Summary: Tristan Trevelyan has lived at the Ostwick Circle of Magi for most of his life. He has come to accept and even cherish the quiet, sheltered life, despite the sorrows it has brought. But his serene, isolated existance is about to change when unrest spreads in the Circles around Thedas. An exploration of who the Inquisitor could have been before becoming the Inquisitor.





	1. Whispers

**Author's Note:**

> First of all, I do not own anything. The world and all characters in it belongs to BioWare. Second, there will be quite a lot of headcanon. We know quite little about the Ostwick Circle of Magi, which has led to me taking some liberties to imagine how life there could be like. Please let me know if there are any big mistakes or other odd things that need to be looked over.

There were whispers everywhere he went these days. They were etched in the great brick walls, carried by the occasional bursts of chilly wind through the old windows and echoing between the many bookshelves lining the walls in the library wing where there should be no possibilities of echoes carrying. The whispers were frightened, furious or curious in nature, but their message rarely reached him and that made him feel privileged. He was not unaware of the general content of the whispered words that were carried like the plague around the Ostwick Circle of Magi. After years of tension rising in Kirkwall the mages there had finally rebelled and it was said that the conclusion had been terrifying, that blood had ran between the cobblestone like a flood, that abominations had roamed the streets and that the whole city had been burning and covered in corpses; civilians, Templars and mages alike.

A chilly breeze made the hairs on his arms bristle and he wrapped the soft fennec fur tighter around his shoulders while turning a page of the heavy tome placed on the table in front of him. The candle's warm flame flickered slightly, hot wax slithering along its side. The words on the page were tiny and blurred slightly before his vision. _"Few studies have succeeded in measuring adequately the perception of organic and non-organic objects and their relation to the Fade…"_ He realized he had not understood anything of what he had just read, and reached to rub his tired eyes with pale, dry knuckles. The black velvet of the night had descended upon the library, the only sources of light the wax candle on the table and four ornately caged torches placed strategically along the circular walls.

Suddenly, he felt frightened. The fear grew inside of him like a tumour, clasping at his innards with twisted claws, tearing at his vocal cords and his lungs. The library was empty: he was alone. _What if the whispers had come true? What if everyone was…?_ It was difficult to breathe, as if the fear had forged a barricade in his throat, blocking the flow of air.

The tension had been rising in the Circle over the last couple of months; fear, anguish and anger brewing among the mages as a result of what had happened in Kirkwall and other Circles around Thedas. He had seen it among the Templars as well: the Ostwick Circle had always been a peaceful, small and quite pleasant Circle compared to what he had heard of others. Certainly, the Circle had a Libertarian fraternity that were occasionally loud in their voicing of displeasure, but it was relatively small and could hardly be viewed as rebellious. The Templars of the Ostwick Circle had always been quite friendly with the mages: as friendly as the jailor can be towards their prisoners. A mage and a Templar chatting in the library, a Templar offering a word of advice in good will or a mage smiling and nodding while passing a Templar in the stairs were not entirely uncommon sights at the Circle. He was aware that the Ostwick Circle had a reputation of having a quite pleasant atmosphere, where the mages and Templars were rather at peace with each other forged by as large an amount of trust as could be expected under the circumstances.

But over the past few months he had noticed a decreasing contact between the Templars and the mages in the Ostwick Circle of Magi. He would rarely see a mage and a Templar chatting and many of the Templars he had thought of as quite friendly had stopped smiling when they passed each other in the corridors. A common sight were now two Templars sticking their heads together, speaking in hushed tones with a wary, anxious look in their eyes that shone emptily through the metal frames of their helmets. And over the past few weeks, the Templars and mages alike had appeared more skittish, more secretive and an increasing odour of paranoia had started to rise from them.

Perhaps the brewing displeasure and paranoia had finally reached a point where it boiled over? When he heard the thuds of plated footsteps approaching from the doorway, heavy Templar armour clanking with every movement, the claws of fear grasped at his heart and squeezed.  
"Trevelyan, it's late. Time to return to your quarters."   
The booming voice that echoed spookily through the Templar bucket helmet was that of Ser Broderick, a young man of twenty-five years or so, that had been assigned to the Ostwick Circle two years ago. He did not invite any friendly conversation, but was a stern, pompous noble-born who took his duties to the Maker very seriously. Tristan shut the tome with a heavy thud that had a certain finality to it, stood up and forced it into its shelf with a slight grunt. He blew out the wax candle on the table and walked out of the library, followed by Ser Broderick.   
"Thank you. Good night, Ser Broderick."   
"Good night, Trevelyan."   
Tristan continued along the dimly lit corridor, his soft fur boots hardly making any noise. The high, ornately barred windows that adorned the brick walls revealed nothing but darkness outside: it must be a cloudy night, since he could not see a single star.

As he reached the grand spiral stair, he continued upward toward the mages' quarters. He had passed his Harrowing several years ago and he had to admit that he enjoyed the perks of no longer being an apprentice. For one, the apprentices had large dormitories with six beds, which allowed no privacy at all: the mages only had to share their rooms with a single other mage and the rooms were split ingeniously by high, sturdy bookshelves. The risk of being disturbed was hence much smaller and he was no longer forced to withstand the eager gossiping and hushed conversations that could go on long into the night in the apprentices' quarters.

The downside to this arrangement was that the mage that now shared his room – a middle aged, odd-eyed elf that probably would prefer living alone in the woods without seeing another living being ever again – did not approve of Tristan reading after midnight. In fact, there was little that he did approve of. As Tristan reached the top of the stairs and closed in on his own quarters, the whispers came travelling through the air towards him again. The building was old, and the roof was tremendously high. Hence, the acoustics were marvellous, which led to him often hearing the Chant of Light from the Circle Chantry, the delicate tones seemingly bouncing off the walls and the roof, filling the halls with sound. What he heard now, however, was not the Chant of Light. He could not pinpoint where the voices originated from and they were little more than whispers. It could be anything, of course, he thought while pacing on slowly, guided only by the caged torches adorning the walls of the corridor. It was hardly uncommon for lovers to meet in the night, trying to gain some privacy and a few hushed, loving words away from Templar supervision. He passed a few Templars that sternly stood guard outside the doors to the mages' private quarters, offering Tristan nothing but a nod, seemingly indifferent or unaware of the hushed conversation.

When he reached his own quarters, he noticed that the heavy oaken door was not properly shut. Siveran, the elf that shared the room with him, usually guarded his privacy like a dragon guard a golden treasure, which made the slightly open door seem odd. Suddenly, a hushed voice crept through the slit of the door, and Tristan stopped with his hand on the doorknob. It was not Siveran's throaty growl, but a woman's pointy, heated whisper vividly coloured by her broad Starkhaven accent.   
"… But it'll have to be soon, Siveran, because I've seen how they look at us. If we don't act soon, they will!"   
Tristan stood alike a statue, frozen on the spot just outside the door with his hand on the doorknob. He felt a chill settle in his hands, creeping through his veins and freezing them solid. The fear reached out its clawed hand and pulled at his innards, tearing at his flesh. He was not certain what it was that he had walked into, but for some reason the woman's words and her tone that was tense with anxiety made the blood freeze in his veins.   
"Did you get word from your contact in Starkhaven?"   
Siveran's voice was a low growl, forced forth through grit teeth. Tristan could imagine the tall, lanky elf's knit brow, and the moss green and nut-brown eyes below the wispy eyebrows, thinning.   
"No, not yet. I'm starting to think that maybe…"   
"Please, Veronica... Don't say that."   
Tristan was surprised to hear the elf's voice soft and hushed and compassionate, emotions that he had assumed was out of reach for the man, and he picked up a faint gasp as if the woman – Veronica – was about to protest.   
"Look", Siveran halted her, "let's wait three more days. If you haven't heard anything by then, we'll move forward anyway. But there's no point in getting ahead of ourselves, you realize that, don't you?"   
A shaky, although not tear-filled – Tristan believed – inhale drifted through the slight sliver between door and doorframe.   
"All right... You're right. I should go. The Templars will be here any minute."   
"Be careful. Don't lose hope."

Too late, Tristan realized that the duo was breaking up their little meeting. His heart throbbed lazily but sickeningly heavy in the base of his throat and it still felt like it was pumping ice into his veins instead of red hot blood, but he managed to break himself off from the door and stalk soundlessly around the corner of the corridor: he was not certain why, but he had a feeling that the consequences would not be light if he was caught eavesdropping. This... This was not two lovers meeting in the dark for a few stolen moments, this was not idle gossiping or a friendly game of late-night Wicked Grace. This, what he had heard, reached far beyond the Circle and it could possibly be related to what he feared the most would happen. _Blood everywhere. Fire. Magic that felt like a freshly sharpened blade and raw lyrium, clinical in its precision. Screams. And pain, so much pain._ He heard the oaken door creak on its hinges as it slowly swung open, and soft, almost soundless footsteps descending the corridor. The woman's – Veronica's – woollen robe rustled softly with her careful movements and soon the entire world around Tristan was laden with silence, pressing against his ears and clutching at his spine.

He willed his legs to start moving and with a few steps, he stood in front of the door to his chambers again, this time not hesitating to open the oaken door that was now shut tight. The room looked just like it always did; the deep, velvety red walls stretching up to the high roof, the grand bookshelf of dark wood stretching through the length of the chamber, full of books and – Tristan noticed – with a thick layer of dust adorning its upper shelves. The source of the dim light was four of the customary caged, greasy beeswax candles that threw the room in a soft, yellow light. Siveran was seated on the edge of the bed to the left of the bookshelf; his long, lean legs stretched out and crossed by the ankles under a moss green and wine-red robe. The elf's long, pointed ears shivered slightly as he lifted his head to fix those deep, odd eyes – one moss green, the same exact nuance as the ornate pattern on the robe, and one hazel, although the dim light made it out to be pitch black – on Tristan as he entered the room. A deeply unpleasant sneer curved the elf's thin lips and he didn't even grace the human with a greeting. Tristan's heart was still pounding furiously: the intense fear that had been clinging to him since he left the library and that was not entirely understandable to him refusing to let go. He turned his back on the elf and stalked over to his own bed, relieved to be out of Siveran's view.

Certainly, the rebellion at Kirkwall's Circle of Magi that had set off similar events at several other Circles around Thedas, would impact on Templar and mage alike. And certainly, Ostwick's Circle of Magi would not be the only Circle where these events would have consequences, despite the feverish clinging to neutrality. Tristan was aware of this, and he was also aware that whatever it was that he had heard, it might not have anything to do with a possible uprising. But, then, what was it that made him so afraid that his blood would freeze, his heart would threaten to break free of its chains of ribs and skin and flesh and leave his body? Tristan was, admittedly, not thrilled by the constant supervision, the Templars' gazes that lingered upon every little movement he made or the constant, lingering threat that was as natural as oxygen in the Circle tower – if you slip up, just once... However friendly, or at least civil, the Templars seemed with their smiling and their nodding, every single mage knew that every single one of these Templars would not hesitate for a second before they eliminated the last flicker of life, spilled the last drop of blood from your veins. It was a life of imprisonment, a life of bitterness of what could have been and a life of isolation. But all the same it was a quiet life, a life you could live in peace and quiet with books as company and a sheltered life, shutting the mages in from the rest of the world for the safety of all and for good and ill. That's what they said.

Tristan was as tired of it as any mage. He was tired of the constant fear, tired of mistrust and tired of the lack of freedom of making your own choices. But there was a difference between being tired of the lack of rights and being prepared to kill, and perhaps die, for a possibility to gain those rights. Yes, there had been a time – it seemed so long ago now – that he had thought he was prepared for that kind of sacrifice for a life he believed he wanted. A life free of supervision, a life free of restrictions and boundaries and rules about every single aspect of life. _But that has all changed_ , Tristan thought with a sting of slight bitterness. All he wanted now was to be left in peace.


	2. Cold sun

He awoke the next morning with a terrible headache. The small, oval windows just below the roof of his chambers let in a stream of cold, harsh sunlight that witnessed of the dawning of a chilly, bright day: one of those days when the sunlight that seeped through the windows of the Circle seemed unforgiving and cruel. He had awoken by himself, as he usually did, and the lack of scurrying footsteps, muffled voices and slamming of doors witnessed of it being early still. He assumed it was the fifth hour, as he usually awoke then.

Stretching out his limbs that felt stiff and tight, he picked up the argument with himself where he had left it the night before when sleep came to claim him. What he had heard Siveran and his friend Veronica talking about yesterday was not necessarily what he had believed it to be. What was said and what it pointed towards was all unclear and he himself had been shaken prior to overhearing the conversation, which meant an increased risk for misunderstanding. Regardless of what it was that he had heard it was none of his business; it was better to leave it at that; he should never have heard it in the first place. A little voice nagged at the back of his skull, however. _People might die for this. Will you actually ignore the fact that you heard something fishy just because you shouldn't have heard it?_ Yes, he decided. That would be the most logical course of action. _Very immoral of you._ Perhaps it was immoral, but it was not his business. He was not even certain of what he had heard. Deciding to do nothing; thereby deciding nothing, felt decent enough and Tristan pushed himself out of the slim, hard bed and its rough linen sheets.

A copper bowl containing cold water mixed with hard soap stood compliantly on the night table, placed there yesterday before he went to sleep. He set to washing himself thoroughly before slipping into a linen tunic and breeches. He pulled one of the customary mage's robes in greens and reds above his head: the Ostwick's Circle was draughty and old, and despite the solid brick walls and the numerous candles and torches that lit the corridors and halls, it was usually quite chilly.

Tristan combed his fingers through his rather long, thick hair, wetting it to be able to push and pull every single hair into place and binding it to a knot with a thick leather band. He never wore his hair down; if there was something he was strict about, it was the fact that one should not appear sloppy. His mother had always been very firm about that. She herself was a very neat, strict woman that never allowed a single hair on her head to flee from the firm braid curled up at the back of her head in some elaborate hairstyle she used to wear it in, or a single crease to be visible on her silk gowns. He didn't remember her all that well; the woman that sometimes wrote him letters was an entirely new person that he only knew by words on parchment, but the few memories of her that he still had was coloured vividly by her incredible fixation with a good appearance.   
"People will judge you by the way you appear to them, Tristan", he remembered her saying once before a dinner party for some family friends: noble families from Ostwick, Starkhaven, Tantervale and Kirkwall – all rather new to their nobility, spreading coin around like it was of no greater worth than gravel.   
He vaguely remembered himself, in a fit of stubborn pride, refusing to wear the ruffled silk breeches and doublet that his mother had bought for the event.   
"In this world", he remembered her saying, "there will always be those that aim to find your weaknesses in order to exploit them. The best defence you can possibly have is a neat, controlled appearance. Do you know why?"   
He hadn't known why. To a boy of six years, his mother's words had seemed oddly frightening: there were People – some People – that would want to hurt him. And the only defence he had was a pair of ruffled breeches?   
"Because when people see that no hair on your head, no inch of clothing and no spot on your skin is in disarray, they unconsciously assume that the same goes for what you have inside of you. When they see you appear so entirely in control of your every action it shields you, and it becomes much harder for them to see through you. Do you understand, my darling? The soldiers have their shields to keep them from harm. We have our appearance. And that's why, sweetheart, you have to wear the breeches and the gold-stitched doublet."   
It occurred to him, while he busied himself with poking a stubborn strand of chestnut hair into the neat bun at the back of his head, how odd it was that he remembered his mother's sentiment in their almost exact wording. Those words, however, had served him well he assumed, and those were words he still lived by. He slipped his sinewy, pale feet into the boots of delicate fur and rose from the bed, straightening the robes that enveloped him with the palms of his hands.

The library wing at the Ostwick Circle of Magi was enormous. Certainly, practice and training actual magic was a large part of Circle education, but especially since becoming a mage Tristan had found that the most part of mage training was burying your nose in books. There were, of course, numerous lectures and training of practical abilities in smaller groups several hours every week and some mages even assisted with different kinds of research projects, but passing your Harrowing came with the perk of being able to choose how to spend your time to a greater degree. Tristan mostly chose to spend it studying magical theory, history or philosophy. Often, however, the larger rooms of the library wing were occupied with groups of apprentices or mages that, more often than not, giggled and gossiped and bothered him in his actual attempts to read. Therefore, he turned left as he reached the main room of the library wing, continuing along a slim corridor lit up only by slender, barred oval windows that let the harsh sunlight seep into the building, revealing the dust that so quickly gathered between the bricks in the walls. The whole wing was completely quiet at this hour, most inhabitants of the tower not having awakened just yet. The only ones he encountered while pacing along the corridor further west were stone-faced Templars standing guard scattered around the wing. A few of them nodded and wished Tristan a good morning as he passed, and he offered curt nods and polite greetings in return. Such was what courtesy demanded of him and he had learned the value of keeping up appearances young.

He reached the end of the corridor and passed a Templar that stood guard outside the doorway to one of the smaller rooms in the wing. The woman clad in heavy plate armour shiny enough to use as a mirror, stood slumped casually against the wall, still as a statue. She did not offer Tristan any sign of recognition. He slunk past her and entered his favourite room in the wing; a small, cramped room with bookshelves so full they appeared ready to burst and only one, small table to sit by, located at the end of the maze of bookshelves just underneath a large triangular window with beautifully ornate glass that allowed pools of light to stream into the dusty little room. It was blessedly quiet, as if someone had allowed all the stillness in the world to slowly float down on top of this very room.

Much to Tristan's dismay, he saw that his regular chair was already occupied by another mage. The girl had her back turned towards him, her coppery red hair cascading down her back in soft curls, sunlight dancing in the strands and streaking it with golden. She wore the same kind of customary mage's robe that he did, although slimmer around the shoulders. In front of her on the worn, robust wooden table, she had built what appeared to be a wall of dusty old tomes, leather bound with fragile parchment pages. She was sitting quite sloppily in the chair, slumped forwards with her elbows resting heavily on the table, a curtain of coppery hair concealing her face where it fell. Tristan began to very slowly, very carefully shuffle backwards on soft soles; he did not wish for company at the moment. He would break the fast in a few hours together with the others, but until then he wanted to spend some time alone.

Of course, that was not going to happen. The soft swishing and rustling of his robes and the shuffling of his feet had drawn the girl's attention; seemingly she had been too preoccupied to notice when he entered, but – as bad luck would have it – she heard when he attempted to leave. She lifted a snowy white hand, artfully spattered with freckles, and pushed the curtain of hair aside, nudging it behind her ear as she turned to look over her shoulder.   
"I figured you'd be around sooner or later."   
Her voice was, as always, dripping with sardonic amusement that more often than not seemed uncalled for. Her thin lips curved into a broad smile, even though she appeared tired; dark shadows lingering beneath her eyes, cheeks even slightly paler than usual.   
"Morning, Sadie. You're up early."   
Tristan returned the smile, but it felt forced and stiff and he allowed it to fade quickly as he made way to the unoccupied chair. Sadie was his oldest friend at the Ostwick Circle. They had found each other early: since they both had arrived only a week apart and since they both had been new, awkward, terrified and without friends, it had seemed only natural that they would stick together. She had come from the a small village south of Markham and was a few years older than him; the fourth daughter of a farmer that was used to rough and tumble life. She had been a tiny girl with a short temper, used to fighting for the last scrap of food on every plate that her five siblings had not yet gotten their hands on. He had been a frightened little boy, quiet as a mouse but well behaved and wide-eyed. The match had been quite unlikely, but she had stood up for him when he didn't dare and he had taught her a few things about keeping a straight face and your head down when the Templars were looking, that might well have saved her life a few times already.

Now, she stretched out her arms across the table, flexing her fingers and craning her neck like a sleepy cat in the pool of early sunlight from the triangular window. She yawned loudly, tilted back on her chair and peered quizzically at Tristan, lips still curved slightly.   
"Yeah. I was up real late yesterday, and up real early. I'm not even halfway through with that idiot Harland's paper."   
Despite the fact that she was not done with a paper that was due that very afternoon, Sadie didn't look particularly stressed.   
"Well, then you have your day set out before you, I guess."   
"Oo-oor… I could look at yours. Just a little bit, to get some inspiration…"   
"No. No, I told you last time, we're not doing that again. You have to pull your own weight and-"   
"Pretty please?"   
"No."   
Tristan fixed his gaze upon his friend, staring her down with a slight scowl. Ever since they came to the Circle, it had been like this. He had always loved to read, and he was, frankly, happier in a room full of books than in a room full of people. Sadie, on the other hand, had struggled since day one. It was not because she wasn't intelligent, she just didn't want to make an effort. At least that's what Tristan figured.   
"Fine", Sadie muttered and tilted a little further back on her chair, eyeing him with pale, nut brown eyes, "be a jerk then. Why do you look so tired?"   
Tristan sighed in resignation, grabbing the tome on top of one of the piles Sadie had built before her. He eyed over the title ( _A study of the laws of physics in the Fade – Upside down or inside out?_ ) more to avoid the question than out of genuine interest.

The truth was that he had been lying awake for hours before sleep came to claim him when his eyes were sore and his head booming with troubling thoughts. He had not been able to forget the conversation he had heard between Siveran and Veronica and that feeling… That paralyzing fear that claimed his very being. He had been unable to shake it and after an hour or so his mind had begun to travel further and further away from what he actually was worried about – the state between reality and the Fade clinging and poking at memories so old and so… Insignificant, that they should not be prodded at all.   
"I had trouble sleeping," Tristan muttered vaguely, hoping that Sadie would not pursue the issue further.   
Naturally, that was too much to hope for. The worst part of it was that she tipped forward on the chair again, her smile dying as quickly as a flame when you soak it in water and her expression morphing to serious concern in a fashion that would have been comical in any other situation. In this one, it only caused him to groan. She was worried now. He should never had said anything, he should have lied.   
"Why? What's the matter? Did something happen? You don't-"   
"Cut it out, Sadie", he snapped and interrupted her bombardment of questions. "It's nothing. It was just something I heard yesterday. I didn't want to tell you, but if you're going to think that I'm…"   
He cut himself off in the middle of the sentence, still staring at the tome in his hands, tracing the inscribed title with a pale index finger. Sadie ignored the jab and the harsh tone that he already regretted, but as he glanced up at her he noticed that the knot of worry between her eyebrows had dissolved.   
"So, what did you hear?"

He told her in a stream of whispers what he had heard the elf and the female mage talk about the night before, and her brow knit together a little tighter with every word. By the time he had finished, she was scowling slightly.   
"It could be nothing…" she said tentatively.   
"Exactly! It probably is nothing, and I think we best forget about-"   
"But", she continued in a harsh whisper, careful not to let the Templar outside the door hear what she was about to say, "it sounds like they are planning something. And it also sounds like they believe it's a matter of doing whatever it is before 'they' do. Whoever 'they' are."   
"Isn't that obvious?"   
Tristan leaned in slightly over the table, his eyes thinning slightly as he stared at Sadie across the wall of tomes.   
"It's the Templars. Don't tell me you haven't noticed it too. They're getting skittish and look at what happened in Kirkwall, at Circles everywhere! Sadie, they think the Templars are going to start killing us, I can feel it, I…"   
Sadie raised a hand, the flat, dry palm facing him in a gesture for him to stop.   
"Before you get ahead of yourself, just listen. We don't know what that creepy roommate of yours and his girlfriend were even talking about. We don't know they meant the Templars, and we don't know if they're even planning anything. All you told me was that the woman said 'we have to act before they do'. 'They' could be anyone. It's not like the Templars would start to cut us open for nothing, they don't do that, they…"   
Tristan felt his heart beat harder, the blood rushing deafeningly in his ears, pulsating with the force of a wallop mallet against his temples. Something stirred deep inside him, causing his whole to uproar. His hands were trembling, he felt, and he dug his fingertips into the leather cover of the tome he was still holding onto as if it was a cliff in stormy water. Sadie saw it to, because she backed away slightly from him, her lips pursing into a thin, pale line in that freckled, usually so cheerful face. Tristan stared at his whitening knuckles, his breathing forced and shallow and his blood continuously rushing furiously within his veins, threatening to burst out of his skin in cascades of red.   
"You know what they're capable of. We all know that."   
His voice was calm, quiet and controlled. He was fairly certain that Sadie was not aware of the complete chaos that was raging inside of him at that very moment. Her voice was apologetic and gentle as she spoke again, with no hint of the amusement or sarcasm it was usually draped in.   
"I'm sorry, Tristan. I'm sorry, I… I forgot. No! No, I didn't forget, I just… I didn't think. I'm sorry, okay? I know that they're capable of… Doing that, I just, you know, I don't think that they would just kill all of us without any reason, I don't think – no, don't look at me like that! You know that they had their reasons to do what they did – where are you going?"   
Tristan had dropped the tome on the robust oaken table with a heavy thud and stood up from the chair without even realizing it. Before he knew, he was striding swiftly over the cold floor towards the door while muttering an excuse to leave. His insides were still in rebellion and he could barely see where he walked; everything seemed blurred at the edges, the walls closing in on him and Sadie's voice as she called him back reached him only as a distant echo.


	3. Desperation

She caught up with him an hour later when he had just sat down on one of the uncomfortably stiff chairs of the dining hall to break the fast alone. It was early still, and the dining hall was bathed in a cold white light, the skies blue and clear. The frost patterns that still clung to the high, triangular windows witnessed of chill, but it rarely snowed in Ostwick: the populace of the Free Marches usually had to settle for biting cold or hard rain, the wind from the Waking Sea mostly carrying with it a chill.

Tristan was entirely focused on the bowl of cold, grey porridge in front of him and was slightly surprised when Sadie, with freckled cheeks blossoming red and thin lips pursed in an uncharacteristically stern fashion, threw herself down on the chair across the table. Tristan sighed softly and put his spoon down next to the bowl of porridge that he had not yet touched.  
"I'm sorry, Sadie, I shouldn't have rushed off like that, I-"   
Sadie stopped him with an annoyingly arrogant gesture and a slight snort, her pale hazel eyes shooting thunder at him with such intensity that he simply blinked and leaned back on his chair, allowing her to speak.   
"Look. First of all, I don't like it when you run off like that. Don't ever do that again, it’s rude. Second, I'm worried about you. No, don't give me that look and don't interrupt me."   
Tristan shut his mouth, inhibiting the urge to defend himself and fend off Sadie's infuriating babying. Sadie's eyes scouted the dining room that was not yet filled with sleepy mages and groups of apprentices hurrying to fill their bellies before the first lecture of the day. In small groups, however, the inhabitants of the tower started to drop into the hall and most of the Senior Enchanters were gathered at their usual long table by the eastern wall: some engrossed in a book or research paper while absently attempting to find their mouths with their spoons, others staring out the window tiredly. Tristan assumed Sadie was paranoid to be overheard and that caused him to expect the worst. He was right.   
"Yes, I'm worried. You don't sleep, I'd bet my left pinkie finger that you don't eat and you look really pale. It was nine years ago, Tristan, nine years. You _have_ to let it go." "I'm fine, I just… You don't understand, Sadie. Just cut it out, I don't need you babying me."   
Tristan curled his fingers around the spoon and started poking the porridge with it, tiredly glancing at Sadie with an attempt to offer a reassuring smile.   
"Please, can we just… Not talk about this right now?"   
Sadie scowled, but got up from the chair and strode off to get a bowl of the grey porridge.

Tristan had stolen some time before breaking the fast to calm himself down. After he had rushed out of the library, he had hasted to his quarters as fast as he had been able to; forced to slow his stride as he walked through the Templar-guarded corridors to not rise suspicion. He had felt the magic stirring within his body, under his skin, struggling to be released: he had brought forth all the control he could muster to calm it down. He had tasted iron and rust in his mouth, his heart had rushed furiously, and his hands had quivered. He had been certain he would not be able to find his way back to his quarters: everything around him had been twisted, the corridors to narrow, the roof too close to his head. But eventually he had reached the oaken door and there had been no Templar standing guard outside, which meant that Siveran had left the room and therefore only a patrolling Templar was needed. The overwhelming feeling of impending death had settled slightly as Tristan had sat down on the bed, alone in the room bathed in cold sunlight. Eventually, his heart had calmed to its usual pace, the blood had stilled in his veins and the magic was dormant under his skin once more.

Sadie came back with a bowl full of porridge and sat down on the chair opposed to Tristan once more. She put the bowl down on the table and pushed the long, coppery hair out of her face, nudging a few wild strands behind her ears.   
"Fine, we won't talk about it anymore. I'll drop it for now."   
"Good", Tristan said while poking around in the porridge with his spoon, offering her a small smile. "Peace?"   
"Peace. So, now to the third thing I was going to say: we should figure out…" she cast a few glances around the dining hall again, but neither Templar nor mage seemed interested in what she was about to say, "… what Siveran and his lady-friend were talking about."   
Tristan settled for staring at Sadie as if she was out of her mind.   
"Listen, listen! I know I said it's probably nothing, but I've thought about it and… It could be something big, right? And if it is, we should know what it is. Maybe we can help, or… Maybe we can stop it. And if it isn't – if it's just something silly – then at least we know, and we don't have to think about it anymore. Either way, it's better if we know, right?"   
"Wrong. I don't want to know."   
"Of course, you do", Sadie smirked and waved any further protests off with her spoon. Porridge flew off the spoon and scattered over the table, but she seemed uninterested in that fact and simply continued shovelling down the food while staring at Tristan with that glint in her eye that said there was no point in arguing with her.   
"Look, I've figured out how to do it. You said the woman's name was Veronica, right? There is one Veronica in my corridor and there can't be that many mages with that name. I even think she's from Starkhaven. I'll sneak in to her quarters and have a look around, you said that she was in contact with someone in Starkhaven, right? There should be letters or something. And while I do that, you go through that creepy elf's stuff."   
Tristan shook his head in disbelief.   
"Are you actually crazy, Sadie? What you're suggesting is not just invasion of privacy, it's incredibly dangerous, not to mention _none of our business_. First of all, what makes you think that sensitive information would just be lying around for anyone to find? If this is something serious, do you really think they would risk the Templars finding any evidence? And secondly, what happens if they find us going through their belongings? I definitely do not see Siveran taking that lightly."   
He shuddered slightly as he imagined the odd-eyed elf finding him reading his personal letters and journals. If that were to happen, he could be happy escaping with all his body parts still attached to his body.   
"Oh, come on!" Sadie exclaimed while gesturing sweepingly with her spoon, "looking around can't hurt. If there's something to find, we find it; if not, we don't. And we'll just have to time it right so that they won't walk in on us. Come on, Tristan, it can't hurt, can it?"   
Tristan sighed slightly and shook his head in a gesture of resignation. He was certain that it could hurt, but there was no arguing with Sadie when she had that look about her. Usually he was able to shoot down her crazy plans quite efficiently, but there was some small part of him that actually wanted to know what Siveran and Veronica were up to. The fear that had prodded at his insides ever since he started hearing the whispers everywhere urged him to do something. Because something was to happen and some small part of him wanted to be prepared when it did.

Tristan and Sadie found little time after breaking the fast to coordinate the "plan" any further. Tristan was still torn between curiosity, fear and shame. As he sat through a lecture on advanced conjuring of compact, non-organic objects, practised the same subject with a Junior Enchanter and a group of mages and read a research paper by an Orlesian Senior Enchanter that predicted a paradigm shift concerning the theoretical construction of primal magic, he could not quite get rid of the slithering feeling that something was wrong. It felt like tiny bugs crept under his skin, nibbling at his nerves, and wherever he went in the tower, he heard whispers carried by the chilly breeze and he thought that they sounded even more anxious than the night before.

He had not seen Sadie in the dining hall that afternoon, but he assumed that she was still in the library or at some lecture or another. It was also possible that she had dined earlier than him; ever since they met when they first got to the Circle, she had been the more outgoing of the two. During their eighteen years in the Circle, she had managed to gain a number of friends and acquaintances while he had preferred to be alone when not in her company. Sometimes he would not see her in several days, because she studied together with her friends – or sat in the library debating politics or laughing about some rumour or another – and ate all four meals of the day with them. Tristan was not uninterested in friendships and occasionally, he sat together with Sadie and her friends in the library, dined with them or went to lectures with them, but he often found himself not having anything to say to them, or not following the dramatic stories of forbidden romances or events outside the Ostwick Circle. More often than not he felt that being together with Sadie and her friends was pretty much the same as being alone.

The Ostwick Circle of Magi had been Tristan's whole world for eighteen years and he had little to no interest in what happened outside of it. He figured that whatever power struggle, whatever feud for land and whatever nobles stabbing each other in the back – things that seemed important to the people outside the Circle – had nothing to do with him and no impact on his life. The only news that he was interested in were in the academical field, and sometimes his mother would write him a letter containing some news concerning the family or the nobles of the Free Marches. At least that had been the case until the more pressing troubles in Kirkwall began. Naturally, he had heard stories of the blight in Ferelden, that the hero that conquered it was a mage and how that eventually came to fuel the Circle mages' frustration. He had been too old for fairy tales back then, but the stories of darkspawn and the Grey Wardens that first had been branded as traitors to then become heroes had still been equal parts terrifying and captivating to him, alike a gruesome fairy tale for an adult public. He had also heard stories of Keenan Hawke – the Champion of Kirkwall. Hawke had been a Fereldan refugee that fled from the blight together with his family and the stories said that he had become very influential in Kirkwall and that one of his companions murdered the Grand Cleric, which set off the rebellion in the Kirkwall Circle of Magi. Tristan had also heard that Hawke singlehandedly killed a battalion of ogres and tamed a dragon – but those stories he was more sceptical towards. Those were the kind of events that reached even his ears. The big, world-altering events that frightened him and made him doubt that even his sheltered, isolated little world was safe.

After having dined alone, watching the shadows descend upon the world through the dining hall's large, barred windows while the torches and beeswax candles around the hall begun to cast a warm, reddish light over the Enchanters, mages and apprentices scattered around the long tables, Tristan retreated to the library wing. Ser Ayesha was standing guard outside the dusty, cramped little room that he had come to view as his own. Ser Ayesha was a short, square-shaped Templar that he had grown to quite like during his time at the Circle. She was a middle-aged, robust woman with a booming voice and Tristan thought that she had always liked him, despite the slightly chilly distance that all Templars kept towards their charges.   
"Good evening, Ser."   
"Evening, Trevelyan. Working hard, I assume?"   
Ser Ayesha's voice boomed at him from the inside of the bucket helmet, but he could spot the hint of a smile beneath the shadow that it cast.   
"I always do", Tristan smiled and picked up the pace again to enter the small, cramped room that he loved.

At the end of the maze of bookshelves, Tristan found that his table by the triangular window was unoccupied. He placed the roll of parchment, the quill and the small jar of pitch-black ink that he had been carrying on the table along with a pile of research papers and sat down, gazing absently at the window in front of him. The world outside was slowly enveloped in shadows, the ghastly shapes of bare trees just barely visible against the blackening skies. It appeared to be a windy evening, as it often was: the skeleton-like branches whipped left and right and he could hear the wind howling around the corners of the old library wing. Suddenly, a stone-cold hand clasped at his heart, squeezing and twisting it and threatening to pull it off of its heart strings. Something deep within him stirred: a longing to stand out there, outside the windows of ornate glass with the decorative but robust bars that kept him inside. A longing to feel the wind pull at his hair and whip at his skin, to smell the fresh, slightly salty air and to be able to touch the rough surface of the tree's bark. They were allowed to go outside now and then, and before the unrest had started in Kirkwall they had even been allowed visits to the city once in a while. But that was not what he longed for: it was the feeling of being free to go wherever he pleased, the feeling of being a part of the world. That world outside that caused the branches of the trees to whip so furiously, the world that caused droplets of rain to patter on the Circle's windows. It was a vain longing and Tristan was aware that it was just a case of wanting what he could not have. The world outside of the Circle had nothing to offer him but chill and fear and pain and it had been many years since he had thought about what it would be like to live outside the Circle’s walls. His life was a quiet one, a plain one, but it was all that he knew.

Shaking his head, Tristan dismissed the disheartening thoughts, but he could not quite shake the longing that felt almost like physical pain. He carefully dipped the tip of the quill in the ink and put it to the thick parchment he used for papers and notes, but he had not written more than four words before he heard footsteps approaching. They were much softer than the steps of Templar boots and he knew that it was Sadie even before she had rounded the table and slumped down in the chair opposite to him. Sadie's freckled cheeks were flushed with colour, her nut-brown eyes wide and glassy and her hands, and she laid them in front of herself on the table, were shivering. Tristan dropped the quill, leaving a blot of pitch-black ink on his paper on the subject of differential creation spells.   
"Sadie, are you alright?"   
He noticed that his voice was shaking slightly, his heart pounding furiously at the base of his throat, which made him feel slightly sick.   
"I'm so sorry, Tristan, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have…"   
Sadie's voice was high-pitched, bordering on panic. It was almost nine years ago since he had seen her this upset, in this very room, and the memory of that caused his stomach to twist and a sickening taste of bile to rise in his mouth. He hushed her and lowered his own voice to a mere whisper, which nonetheless sounded shaky and child-like.   
"Sadie, it's alright… What happened?"   
She stared at him glassy-eyed and shook her head, casting a paranoid glance around the tiny room, but nothing was there to see except rows and rows of dusty old tomes.   
"I… I decided to go through with our plan. I knew Veronica wasn't in her room because there was no Templar outside so… So I snuck in and-"   
Tristan groaned aloud, barely managing to keep himself from burying his face in his dry palms.   
"How could you be so stupid, Sadie, what-"   
"No, listen! I didn't actually think I'd find anything because… You know. I thought it was just a misunderstanding. But she had a locked box under her bed and… And I used a hairpin to pry it open. And there were letters in there, letters and journal pages and… And everything."   
Despite the black sludge of paralyzing fear that started to stir inside of him and slither its way into his bloodstream, Tristan could not help but notice that Sadie was on the verge of crying, her voice starting to gain a high pitch once more. He let out a sharp "shh!" and stared at her, urging her to continue despite the feeling of impending death that started to creep up his spine, increasing the sensation of being physically ill.   
"And… And I read some of it, there were so many letters and I've no idea how she could smuggle them past the Templars, but she must have connections or something but Tristan, they… They think that the Templars are planning something soon, that they're going to annul the Circle! Her and Siveran and some other mages. Someone's going to break them out. They're going to try to escape."


	4. What once was (part one)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is in a retrospective perspective, spanning from Tristan's childhood until he is about nineteen years old (nine years earlier than the previous chapters).

Tristan had been ten and a half years of age when he was taken to the Ostwick Circle of Magi. As for most children that were taken away from their parents to live like colourful birds in a cage, the first few months had been hard for him. Many nights, he had awoken in the smothering darkness with no one there to sing to him or caress his hair until he fell asleep again, and the horrors of the Fade seemed like harmless dreams once more. The first couple of months at the Circle he had cried at night, wishing nothing more than to return home to the Estate where he knew every nook and cranny, where there always lingered a light, almost unnoticeable smell of lavender and where he knew that whenever he was scared – even though he was not supposed to – and whenever something hurt, his mother would always be there.

Sometimes, in those first couple of months at the Circle, a Templar would come into the dormitory upon hearing his cries. It was not uncommon that the younger children cried for their mothers or woke up scared in the middle of the night, and the Templars were used to it, but their way of offering comfort was much less warm and loving than the children were used to. Eventually they all stopped crying at night, as did Tristan. His oldest brother Harvin, seven years older than Tristan and heir to the title, the riches and the estate, had told him on the day of his tenth birthday that Tristan was a big boy now, almost a man. And men did not cry. The ten year old Tristan had looked up to Harvin almost as much as he had looked up to the heroes from his mother's stories: he was tall and strong and swung a greatsword with the grace and precision of a Knight (at least in the eyes of a ten year old boy) and if he said that Tristan should not cry, he knew that to be true. So when he stopped crying for his mother at night, he knew that he was doing the right thing.

The first year at the Ostwick Circle of Magi, Tristan had gotten letters regularly from his mother. She rarely revealed anything of interest to him but told him about what his brothers and his sister were doing, about the flowers that bloomed in the garden and other things that seemed important in her little world. As time passed, however, the letters arrived more and more rarely. They were still long: parchment after parchment filled with ornately curled letters telling of important (and less important) events concerning the family, their friends and other nobles in the Free Marches. Harvin wed the daughter of a minor Kirkwall nobleman and his sister Elena became the betrothed of the (very handsome, his mother pointed out) second son of a quite prominent Ostiwck family. His brother Jonathan joined the Chantry and his father fell ill. All of these things, Tristan read about in letters and he found himself caring a little less and a little less about the news for each letter that arrived: partly because the memories of his family faded a little more each day until he no longer felt that he knew them or even remembered their faces. Partly because none other than his mother had shown any interest in communicating with him since the day he was sent to the Circle. Sometimes he believed that she only sent him those letters out of guilt.

More and more for each day, the memories of home faded and were replaced by a feeling of belonging at the Circle of Magi. Here, Tristan had his books, he had his own bed, he saw the same faces every day at lectures, in the dining hall and in the library and mostly, he had Sadie by his side. The more that he felt at home at the Circle, the more detached he found himself becoming from the world outside. When he was sixteen, he was certain that he had a bright future in the academical world ahead of him, and he would ask nothing more of the world: he was an intelligent and interested student, albeit something of a loner.

All of that was about to change, however. As the world outside of the Circle became darker, more violent, and the unrest spread across Thedas, while he and Sadie both grew older, Tristan noticed that Sadie became more restless and irritable. He often caught her staring longingly outside through the barred windows as if she wished she could turn into a bird and fly out of there. They rarely discussed her changing view of the world, but she gained an increased interest in politics and started spending time with the more outspoken and radical apprentices that were often sitting in the library wing together, engrossed in heated debates about the oppressive Chantry and what life would be like in Tevinter. Sadie's change of course led to Tristan and her spending less time together and him spending more time alone: there was something about those rebellious, witty and politically interested apprentices that he perceived as intimidating, and he was certain they saw him as a Chantry loyalist with no mind of his own. This was not true, however. Certainly, Tristan had come to welcome the solitude and the never ending circle of routines that Circle life offered, but there were also times when he felt angry about the isolation, the strict rules and the lack of rights that were imposed upon mages, and there were times that he despised himself for settling for so little in life. But he had chosen to accept his lot in life and the paradoxical emotions that swelled inside of him at times, he chose to ignore.

Sadie's increased interest in politics and decreased interest in hers and Tristan's friendship eventually left Tristan feeling quite lonely. He enjoyed being alone with his thoughts and his books, but he had gotten used to Sadie being his safe haven at the Circle, and not having her around left him feeling emptier than he had imagined. The consequence of this was that he eventually started to spend shorter periods of time together with Sadie and her new friends. It did make him feel like a burden – as if he was a leech clinging desperately to Sadie – and he rarely contributed to the heated discussions or the friendly chatter: it was sufficient for him to sit and listen silently, which he suspected made several of Sadie's friends uncomfortable.

But there was, as there often is, one exception to the rule. At first, when Tristan had started to sometimes spend time with Sadie and her friends, he had seen the group as somewhat of a blob: to him, they were one and the same, interchangeable in absurdum. After a while, however, he started to understand the dynamics of the group, separating each part from the other. There was Lori, an outspoken, short-tempered girl from Kirkwall that had been transferred to Ostwick after something she referred to as "the incident"; there was Thord, a tall, muscular boy that looked like a farmer, with a mop of blonde hair that never seemed to be combed and with a warm laughter that would boom throughout the whole library; there was Ysendra that had – they realized after a while – been to a few parties at the Trevelyan Estate as a child since she was the second daughter of a minor Ostwick nobleman. And then there was Elliot. He rarely spoke about his family or his background, and Sadie liked to say he wanted to keep an aura of mystery around himself to make himself more interesting. Elliot was a few years older than Tristan and had a brilliant mind: he could understand correlations and causations that were miles above Tristan's head and had theories about the Fade and spirits that could compete with those of experienced researchers. He talked about things with such burning passion that Tristan often found himself completely engrossed by him. The odd part was that he appeared to be interested in what Tristan had to say. After having sporadically spent a few weeks with Sadie and the group, sitting quietly behind a book while they debated or just listening when they discussed news from outside the Circle, Tristan noticed that Elliot often asked him for his point of view and actually seemed to be interested by the stuttering answers he received.

A few months after Tristan had been accepted as a quiet, slightly awkward appendage to the group, it was not an uncommon sight to see him and Elliot together in the library without the rest of the group: reading quietly side by side or discussing some theory or other. Tristan found that he enjoyed the mysterious apprentice's company – not more than he enjoyed Sadie's, just in a different way. He was content to sit for hours just listening to Elliot talk about some new research paper on communication with spirits, watching his hands move enthusiastically alike pale, sinewy spiders dancing across the table, eyes glimmering with passion. Elliot was so well read, so brilliantly talented and curious and certain that his perception of the world was correct, that Tristan rarely reflected upon the fact that he could be wrong. Certainly, Elliot's fascination of the Fade and the creatures in it came across as so intense that it sometimes appeared naïve: everyone knew that not only well-meaning spirits roamed the Fade, but also cunning demons that more than anything wanted to be allowed into this world to sunder and destroy. Elliot knew that as well, but it seemed less important to him that the Fade could be dangerous than that it could be beautiful, and sometimes he even talked about the "Chantry's propaganda" that scared mages into believing all spirits were evil beings when it was more likely that the spirits were much more complex than that.

For almost a year, Tristan and Elliot were inseparable. He saw Sadie and the rest of the group a few times a week: mostly he and Elliot were sitting together in the cramped little room at the west end of the library wing where it was silent and peaceful and where they could almost forget that they were not the only two people in the world. Their relationship was uncomplicated: they spoke very little about themselves and very much about the academical, the theoretical and the scientific. Tristan knew very little about Elliot: he had learned that he had grown up at an orphanage outside of Ostwick, that he had been eight years old when he showed the first signs of magical aptitude and had been sent to the Circle immediately, and that he had not yet been called to the Harrowing – a fact that very much surprised them both since his intellect and knowledge well overreached that of most apprentices and a good few of the mages.

Tristan also knew that Elliot sometimes disappeared. It could be for a few days or a week, but it had happened thrice since they got to know each other. The first time it happened, Tristan had asked Sadie and the others where he was, but no one had been able to give him a satisfying answer. Elliot had appeared again after a few days, looking paler than usual with dark shades underneath his eyes, perhaps quieter and more withdrawn than usual, but otherwise unharmed. When Tristan had asked where he had been, he had not gotten a clear answer. Eventually, Tristan realized that the times Elliot disappeared, it had been preceded by a brief period of increased intensity. Elliot would sit in the library to study late at night after Tristan had gone to sleep, and when he saw him again in the morning, he sometimes thought that Elliot had not been sleeping at all. During those brief periods Elliot was also even more passionate than usual, generating new brilliant theories in rapid pace and reciting them loudly with a burning fascination even though they did not always make sense to Tristan. At those times, there was a certain glimmer in his eyes that made Tristan uncomfortable in a way that he could not quite explain.

To a person more well versed in romance, it might have been obvious almost from the very beginning that there was something more than friendship between Tristan and Elliot – or perhaps simply a different kind of friendship than it appeared to be. But to Tristan, the relationship did not need to be more complicated than it was: the way that he felt when the two of them were sitting together at the library, speculating about how life would be if they were free to live wherever they wanted, or when they broke the fast together in the early morning in complete silence, was enough for him simply because it was the only thing he expected.

Tristan had never experienced anything that could resemble love before and saw it only as an abstract concept. Certainly, there had been one episode when he was thirteen years of age and Sadie was fifteen, when she had kissed him behind a bookshelf. It had felt odd and not at all comfortable: he had been very preoccupied with where his hands should be, how her breath smelled and how her nose bumped into his. The whole experience had been awkward enough to cause Sadie to avoid him for a whole week. They had never spoken of it since, and half-consciously Tristan had thought that if it had not felt right with Sadie, it would not feel right with anyone. After all, she was the only person he had been able to confide in since he left home.

There were times when Tristan briefly touched the thought that his and Elliot's friendship was somewhat different than what he was used to. There were times when he realized that he was not as captivated by little details about Sadie as he was by little details about Elliot: how his pointy collar bone cast a soft shadow on his skin when he leaned over a book, how the slight gap between his front teeth made his smile look somewhat crooked, and the way a gash above his elbow had healed, stretching the skin and splitting a birthmark in half. And there were times that he was aware that he would be content just sitting by the large triangular window in what had become their room in the library wing, bathing in a pool of early morning sunlight with Elliot by his side, forever. Despite Elliot's intense, introverted and sometimes manically passionate nature, there was no other person Tristan felt so at peace with.

Despite these glimpses of insight about his feelings towards Elliot, Tristan rarely consciously thought about what life could be like if their friendship was to evolve into something more. He preferred to cherish what he had and enjoyed the days, weeks and months he spent in Elliot's company: especially those moments when they sat in the cramped library room surrounded only by books, and their hands almost touched as they fidgeted with the pages of one tome or another. Those moments were enough.

At least they were for almost a year. It had been late, and the sun had set several hours earlier, leaving the world outside a wet black; rain tapping tentatively against the triangular window of the little room that had become their part of the library wing. The Templar standing guard outside the room would come in soon to urge Elliot and Tristan to get some sleep. Elliot had been quieter than usual, appearing worn and pale with slumped shoulders and unwashed hair. Tristan had shut the tome he had been reading with a heavy thud that caused Elliot to start slightly, raising his dark gaze to fix Tristan on the opposite side of the worn oaken table. Tristan had been somewhat uncomfortable, but as he had looked Elliot over, seeing the dark shades underneath his eyes, the gloomy, greyish skin and the absent-minded gaze, he had felt forced to ask the question that he had been wanting to ask for such a long time, but dreaded to hear the answer to.   
"What's actually going on with you? You disappear and… And then you're like a completely different person and then, after a few days... You're like yourself again."   
Elliot had given him a look that had been so painful to receive, as if Tristan had stabbed him in the back with a rusty knife.   
"Sometimes I need time to rest."   
He had stood up, blowing out the beeswax candle on the table and shutting the tome with a spindly hand. Tristan had stood up as well and taken a step towards the young man that looked so fragile and still so full of integrity, perhaps to question him further or to apologize. Instead, he had found himself standing only an inch away from his friend, their gazes interlocking in the dim light while the rain pattered against the barred window, their breaths loud like a thunderstorm in the cramped room. Tristan had felt dizzy, as if the world was spinning or as if he himself was spinning, and when their lips met, he had been certain his heart was going to stop. It was similar, yet so different from that time Sadie had kissed him behind a bookshelf. When he had kissed Elliot, he had been completely unaware of where to put his hands and he had been preoccupied with the feeling of soft, surprisingly cold lips against his own, the smell of Elliot's unwashed hair, and the tentative way their lips touched; but it had felt right.


	5. What once was (part two)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is part two of a retrospective perspective, spanning from Tristan's childhood until he is about nineteen years old (nine years earlier than the previous chapters).

After that night in the library, Tristan’s whole world changed, but at the same time, nothing at all was different. When he arrived at the dining hall to break the fast the next morning, the sun seemed to shine a whole new light on the world, the Circle and the numerous mages, apprentices and Enchanters that were sitting in clumps scattered around the long tables eating their morning porridge, reading their papers and engaging in conversation across the robust tables. Even the Templars guarding the dining hall, spattered out across the room alike shiny decorative statues, seemed less ominous than usual. When Tristan put his stonework bowl full of grey porridge down on the table across from Sadie at their usual spot in the dining hall, beside a huge triangular window adorned with colourful handmade glass in different shades of reds and yellows, he saw that she was alone – quite the unusual sight. She looked up at him sourly, pale and with her coppery red hair a mess.   
“You look tired”, he remarked while absentmindedly shuffling around the porridge with his spoon.   
“I was up all night trying to solve those damned formulas for Partridge’s paper. And then those idiots Maya and Linnea in my dormitory giggled about some stupid gossip until the third hour and I couldn’t sleep until they shut up.”   
Sadie let out an annoyed groan and pounded her spoon against the, now quite cold and somewhat solidified, porridge in her bowl. Her facial expression quite well resembled that of a seven-year-old girl angry with her mother, with a knit brow and a slight pout.   
“That’s disgusting, can you please stop?”, Tristan asked while following the journeys of Sadie’s spoon with his gaze. She stopped grumpily, and he continued:   
“I don’t understand why you never do your work during the day. Would save you some sleepless nights, I’d wager.”   
“I’m not like you and Elliot, I have better things to do than studying.”   
Tristan felt his heart skip a beat and hurried to shove an oversized spoonful of porridge into his mouth, perhaps with the flawed logic that if he was eating, Sadie could not see that his cheeks were slightly flushed with colour and that his heart was beating with the fury of a rushing herd of druffalos. When he had managed to swallow the mouthful, he said:   
“Where are the others, by the way?”   
“I think they all had an early lecture on spirit magic or something”, Sadie yawned with obvious disinterest. “Nice to see you, by the way. I don’t think we’ve eaten together in over a week. You’re always off with Elliot. Should I worry about being replaced?”   
Sadie gave Tristan a stare with bloodshot eyes over her bowl of porridge, a thin, reddish eyebrow slightly lifted. She shoved a spoonful into her mouth, swallowed elaborately, waved the empty spoon around and said with newfound energy (Tristan heard that some of that usual sardonic amusement was slowly creeping back to her voice now that she was starting to wake up properly):   
“He’s kind of weird you know. Have you noticed how he sometimes disappears for days? Lori says it’s because he’s sick somehow. And that that’s the reason he hasn’t gone through the Harrowing yet.”   
Tristan’s brow furrowed slightly, and he busied himself with his half-empty bowl. He listened for a while to the scraping of cranky wooden chairs, the unidentifiable buzz of multiple conversations around him and the somewhat shrill, very characteristic laughter from the Enchanters’ table that definitely belonged to Enchanter Harland. Sadie seemed to interpret his silence as an invitation to continue her monologue.   
“You know, Lori passed her Harrowing six months ago, Thord four months ago and that tall girl Ulah – Senior Enchanter Alveris’ pet, you know – told Lori that Ysendra will probably be called next week, and me too. Don’t tell anyone she said that though, she’ll get in trouble for telling. You’re still a bit younger, but rumour is you’ll be called soon too. But Elliot is one year older than me, and he’s been here longest of all of us. There’s something weird about it, don’t you think? Everyone keeps saying how smart he is, so he should’ve been called before all of us, right?”   
Tristan felt an intense annoyance towards Sadie building within him, his cheeks heating and his hands shaking slightly, causing the spoon to clink against the stonework bowl. Hadn’t he thought about this himself? Wondering why Elliot, that was so bright, so open-minded and so full of original ideas had not been called to the Harrowing yet, wondered if there was something his friend was not telling him. But despite the fact that he had pondered about those things himself, he felt a rage building towards Sadie: she sat there across the table, gossiping and speculating without knowing a thing about Elliot. The sunlight that had seemed so inviting and alike a foretelling of a great day, started to sting in his eyes, annoying him. Before he knew it, he had grabbed his half-eaten bowl of porridge from the table and stood up.   
“Do you talk like this about me too when I’m not around?”, he hissed at a seemingly quite confused Sadie, before rushing off without her.

The little dispute in the great hall could have been just another disagreement between Tristan and Sadie. During their years together at the Circle, the two had grown to become more alike siblings to each other than their actual siblings were, and they had had numerous spats throughout the years. Usually, they resulted at most in a day of sullen silence from one of them (mostly Sadie) after which they made up and never spoke of it again. This time was different. Tristan actively avoided Sadie for almost a week – and not only her, but also Lori, Ysendra and Thord. Several times, he noticed that Sadie tried to catch his eye in a lecture hall or the dining hall when they were breaking the fast or eating supper at opposite sides of the hall. A few times, he even saw her trying to make her way towards him in a corridor or in the library, but each time, he managed to quickly leave before she had a chance to back him into a corner.

Tristan did not quite know why he was so upset with her. The words she had spoken that morning in the great hall were not alien to him – he had thought them himself. Surely, he had realized that something more was going on with Elliot than that he, like he himself had said, “needed to rest sometimes”. Surely, he was aware of the sometimes odd behaviour of his friend. But despite the fact that all logical arguments pointed towards that Tristan was behaving irrationally being this upset with Sadie, he could not manage to let it go.

Again, for a person more well versed in romance, Tristan’s behaviour would not have seemed so odd. Anyone that has ever been head-over-heels in love, is aware that one’s capability of logic and reason is usually deeply flawed when in this state. And anyone that remembers the first time they fell in love, knows that it is very difficult to realize that the person one is in love with is, in fact, imperfect. And that having someone else tell you that, is even worse. Tristan knew none of this. He had never felt something even remotely close to what he felt for Elliot, and he had never been the kind of young person that enjoys reading romance novels, and – importantly – no one at the Circle had ever made an effort to tell him, or any of the other young apprentices there, how it felt to be in love. No doubt Tristan’s lack of friends also played a part in leaving him quite the novice on the subject – Sadie and he had never discussed it, she had had other friends for that purpose and he had never been very interested. All of this contributed to a very confusing week for Tristan. He struggled with his own emotions and the possible inappropriateness of them, he struggled with his anger towards Sadie, with his concerns about Elliot, with remembering what the Chantry said about these things, with not having Sadie around to discuss all of his ponderings with and, most importantly, with making the time to see Elliot as much as he possibly could.

While a whole new world of emotions and experiences that he barely had dreamed of unfolded in Tristan’s life, the Circle remained the same. Apprentices, mages and Enchanters scurried along in the corridors, went to lectures, sat in the library, discussed current events and enjoyed the occasional sun in the courtyard during the otherwise chilly days. Life went on as usual, and it had never seemed so uninteresting and trivial to Tristan as it did during that first week of love. He rarely reflected upon the fact that he was not the only one that had ever felt the way he did; that he, in a sense, was the most trivial of all. He went to lectures, he sat in the library – sometimes alone, but more often with Elliot by his side – he ate four times a day in the great hall and at the surface, life was as it always had been. But between lectures he and Elliot were together in one of the many nooks and crannies of the Circle where the Templars rarely sat foot, and they talked about life outside of the Circle while Tristan rested his head on Elliot’s lap, or they snuck away to a dark corner somewhere and kissed, or they sat silently together and watched the stars through barred windows.

The sun set early this time of year. The dusk crept slowly upon the world, spreading its black velvet wings across the Waking Sea, gradually revealing the sky’s many constellations of stars. Tristan and Elliot were seated on the old wooden floor from which a slight chill crept, their shoulders lightly touching as they rested their backs against the brick wall. Behind them were windows overlooking the botanical gardens, in front of them the view of the sky spreading out its star-spattered banner over the Waking Sea. Templars patrolled this corridor now and then, but the activity was low now that the dusk had set: most of the Circle’s inhabitants were residing in the library wing, the dining hall or in their quarters at this hour. The occasional mage might take a stroll through the empty corridors, but the risk of being interrupted was quite low.   
“That’s The Chained Man.”   
Elliot lifted a bony hand and pointed towards the window, his gaze fixed at the sky. Tristan peered into the darkness, eyes searching for the constellation of stars that had drawn Elliot’s attention.   
“Can you see the chain he’s dragging behind him? There.”   
Elliot pointed again, before allowing his hand to fall to his knee.   
“I think so… Maybe.”   
Tristan glanced at Elliot; the raven hair fell in unruly curls and the grey, deep set eyes stared absent-mindedly into the abyss that was the black sky outside. His cheekbones and jaw that, as far as Tristan knew, had always been pronounced, seemed even sharper than they had be, the pale skin that stretched over the bones seemed to lack any lustre. A few locks of hair curled softly behind the ears, that little detail so captivating that Tristan felt a small smile curve his lips. He reached out to allow his fingertip to carefully push the curls aside, planting a kiss behind Elliot’s ear. The apprentice started slightly, but he smiled – a warm, gap-toothed smile that caused Tristan’s heart to skip a beat. Elliot allowed his spindly hand to slip into Tristan’s, pressing his fingers once. The hand was cold, and Tristan shuffled closer to share some of his own warmth.   
“Are you cold? Perhaps we should go back. The floors here let in some of the chill from the ground.”   
Elliot ignored the sentiment, leaning his raven head back against the wall.   
“You and Sadie are fighting.”   
It was a statement, not a question. Tristan swallowed dryly and flexed his fingers, placing the back of Elliot’s hand in his own palm instead of holding it. He traced the lines of Elliot’s upward-facing palm with his thumb while pondering a suitable reply.   
“I don’t know about fighting, we’re just… We’re not speaking right now, but we will soon. It’s nothing.”   
Elliot flashed a brief smile, still peering out at the sky.   
“Who’s right? You or her?”   
“I… I don’t know. Maybe we both are, a little bit.”   
Elliot nodded slightly, the subject not interesting to him anymore, it seemed. They sat in silence for a while, Tristan listening to Elliot’s slow-paced breathing while Elliot was probably thinking about something important. When he spoke again, Tristan suspected that he had been through several subjects in his mind before arriving at this one.   
“Do you believe in the Maker?”   
“Ah… I think so? I don’t… I don’t know. In my family we’re quite pious, my brother Jonathan is a Chantry brother now, I believe. I suppose that I would’ve been too, had I not… Been here.”   
Tristan had not pondered much about his faith, he had always just taken for granted his belief in the Maker, ever since he was a child. He visited the Circle’s Chantry from time to time; he enjoyed listening to the Chant of Light and had always felt quite safe within the walls of a Chantry. The warmth of the light in there, and the stillness that lingered in the very walls had always made him feel at peace.   
“Do you?”, he asked. “Believe in the Maker, that is?”   
“No.”   
“Why?”   
He peered aside at Elliot, who had shut his eyes, still resting his head against the wall. Tristan clasped his hand together with Elliot’s again, shuffling a little to be able to rest his head against the taller apprentice’s shoulder. The scent of his hair and skin was quite alike that of parchment, Tristan thought.   
“The Maker is just another lie that the Chantry teaches us to assume control of the masses, to keep them in line. By threatening people with a holy force, they control their behaviour, because no one dares to stand up to the one that can lead them to salvation – or ruin their lives on a whim. If you “sin”, you are doomed to forever wander in the Void… How does anyone dare to oppose when they could be doomed to an eternity of being hopeless, lost and alone? And conveniently enough, there is no way to prove that eternity.”  
Elliot’s voice had a certain bite to it; Tristan recognized it from heated debates at the library.   
“I quite like the thought of having someone waiting for me though, when it’s… Over. I don’t know, it feels… Safe”, he replied tentatively.   
“ _’Draw your last breath, my friends. Cross the Veil and the Fade and all the stars in the sky. Rest at the Maker’s right hand, and be forgiven.’_ It must be nice, believing that.”   
Tristan felt a shiver slither it’s way up his spine as he heard the verse from the Canticle of Trials recited. Elliot’s voice sounded hollow somehow; cynical and so cold that he could almost feel the frost creeping up between them. Tristan sighed, peering out at the night once more. Again, they sat in silence, each lost in their own thoughts.   
“I’m sorry that I sound so harsh sometimes. I just… It’s not fair.”   
Elliot’s voice had dropped an octave, it was soft and quiet. Tristan felt fingertips softly tracing his jaw, pushing lightly at his chin so that the two apprentices came to face each other, their lips only inches apart. He could feel Elliot’s warm breath against his skin, the grey eyes studying Tristan intently. The question of what it was that was not fair died on Tristan’s lips; he felt dizzy, as if the air was getting heavier to breathe. Elliot flashed a small smile.   
“But not everything can be fair, right? It’s the risks that keep life interesting.”   
Elliot’s voice was a mere whisper, his lips so close to Tristan’s that he could almost feel when they moved to shape the words. The kiss that followed made him forget everything about the Maker, the afterlife and the fact that the Templar on patrol could be back any minute.

“That idiot Ulah said that I’ll be called to my Harrowing soon, you know.”   
A partly annoyed, partly tentative, crisp voice interrupted the laughter Tristan and Elliot had been sharing over something silly Enchanter Isera had said during a lecture the day before, causing them to glance up from the porridge they both ate to break the fast. Sadie’s hazel eyes were fixed at Tristan, slightly narrowed. Her mouth was a little bit pursed, causing her to look both stern and decisive. Tristan turned back towards the stonework bowl on the table in front of him, turning his back towards his best friend. For reasons he was not entirely certain of, a sudden annoyance towards her had awoken as soon as he heard her voice and he had no desire to look at her, even less to speak with her.   
“Good luck, then”, he said with a biting chill that he hardly recognized himself.   
Elliot smiled at Sadie across the table and echoed the well-wishes. Tristan could hear Sadie shuffle her feet in soft slippers behind his back, her apprentice robes rustling slightly as she moved. When she spoke again, it was in an uncharacteristically polite fashion.   
“Elliot, I’m sorry to be a bother, but could I talk to Tristan alone for a few minutes?”   
Before Tristan had the chance to protest, Elliot had taken the stonework bowl with only a bottom layer of grey porridge left, flashed a brief smile and walked off. Sadie rounded the table and sat down on the spot Elliot had just left, nudged the long curtain of copper hair behind her ear and inhaled deeply before blurting out, in rapid pace:   
“I’m sorry that I said all those things about Elliot, you know I sometimes speak without thinking and I didn’t think it all the way through, I hate that you’re mad at me and I’m not really sure why you are but I don’t want you to be and my Harrowing is soon and I don’t want us to fight in case I don’t make it and what if-“   
Tristan halted the stream of words with a gesture of his hand, shaking his head slightly while studying Sadie. He noticed that she looked quite unhappy and anxious, a frown adorning her brow and her eyes slightly widened.   
“Thank you”, he said calmly, “you’re forgiven.”   
Despite the exchange, a chill still lingered between them. Tristan returned to his porridge and Sadie absentmindedly carved at the rough wooden table with a long fingernail. An unsettling feeling gnawed at Tristan’s insides, as if a small animal wriggled uncomfortably behind his ribs, attempting to escape its cage. He scraped the spoon against the bottom of the empty bowl, refusing to look at Sadie. After a few silent minutes, he made a gesture of standing up, but before he could, Sadie spoke again, probably triggered by his attempt to leave. “  
Someone saw you, you know”, she said quietly, tentatively, as if afraid of his reaction.   
Tristan looked up at her, her expression an odd mix between fear and a wish to grin.   
“What?”   
“You. And Elliot. When you… You know.”   
Tristan thought that it felt a little like being suffocated. He swallowed and swallowed, but his mouth was suddenly very dry. He felt his cheeks heating as he searched through his memories of the past week in an attempt to figure out what Sadie could mean. They had been so careful in their choosing of reclusive meeting spots, when could someone had seen them?   
“Just… Ah, just kissing. Someone had heard it from Igor, you know that apprentice that kind of looks like an otter, and they told Ysendra about it and… And she told me. I… I just thought you should know.”   
Sadie looked like she was preparing herself for Tristan to throw something at her, but he had nothing to say, just thoughts raging through his head sluggishly. His capacity of thinking had seemingly been reduced to that of a quite unintelligent life form. Sadie seemed to take his silence and his, no doubt, flustered appearance, as a chance to repair what was broken between them, because she leaned across the table and planted her elbows firmly against it, the curtain of hair loosening from behind her ears. Her voice was quiet but seemed to regain some of its amused tone as she spoke.   
“I just want you to know that… That I’m happy for you. You know, I don’t mind… I mean, of course I don’t mind. I- Just, maybe be a little more careful from now on? Especially if you’re planning to, you know… Maker, you don’t have to look like a stuffed nug! Everyone does it, you know. The Circle is basically a big brothel without the fees, I can’t believe you haven’t noticed that yet.”   
For reasons he was not quite certain of – perhaps because he had missed Sadie, perhaps because it felt slightly bizarre to sit in the great hall and talk about sex in cryptic terms with her when the relationship between them just had started to warm up after a week of icy silence, or perhaps because he had to release the bubbly happiness inside of him that he had not been able to share with just anyone – Tristan started to giggle uncontrollably. After having stared at him for a while, wide-eyed and seemingly quite confused at the sudden shift in behaviour, Sadie could not control herself either. They both leaned across the table, giggling like two children, not at all acting like the adult, soon to be mages that they were. When they had both calmed down, with stomachs aching from laughter and eyes filled with tears, Sadie’s facial expression morphed into a quite dramatic one. “Okay, now that you’re not acting like an idiot anymore, I want to talk about my Harrowing.”

After that morning, Sadie and Tristan were friends again. They were inseparable once more, except for the hours Tristan spent with Elliot. Sadie passed her Harrowing without incidents, something she swore she had known from the beginning despite having acted like a nervous wreck and screamed at everyone that dared talk to her for a whole week before she had finally been called. She moved up a floor, to the mages’ quarters, and got to share a room with a very small, mouse-like woman that had, alike Sadie, grown up on a farm on the countryside outside Ostwick. Her name was Greta, and Sadie spent many an hour complaining about the fact that Greta, despite her very quiet and timid nature during her waking hours, snored like an entire horde of brontos when she was asleep. Tristan could, in fact, not remember that he had ever been as satisfied with life as he was during the following months. He and Sadie were back to acting like siblings, and despite her never-ending prying in his personal life, he was relieved that they had found one another again. He started to notice that he could actually contribute to a conversation – without feeling like a stupid child – when Ysendra, Thord and Lori were around, and a few times he even made them laugh with some remark or other. More than once he thought that they looked at him with something that seemed closely related to fascination when he spoke about some new research paper or commented on a lecture he had been to. Out of the group, he and Elliot were now the only ones that were still apprentices. All the others had moved up a floor and now wore mages’ robes and spent more time reading at the library than in lectures. Ysendra spent a lot of time with a small group of mages that researched what effects creation magic could have on plant life, and she spent long hours studying the many, tiny parts that created the composition of individual plants and the effects of different spells on each individual part. Thord and Sadie both focused their energy on the entropy school of magic which, when they talked of it seemed very complex and more complicated than Tristan had realized, since he had never studied it on an advanced level. Lori studied philosophy and history, and spent much of the group’s time together in the library lecturing the others about the lies that the modern Chantry spread, and how much of what they taught about magic were mere interpretations that had been made not as a service to the Maker, but as a way of political control and oppression.

Often, Tristan and Elliot discussed what Lori had said during one of their gatherings when they sat alone in some remote corner of the Circle, away from the Templars and away from gossip-hungry apprentices. They talked a lot about running away from the Circle together and start a new life somewhere far away, perhaps in Orlais, or even better, in Tevinter where their gifts would be celebrated, not shunned. For Tristan, these conversations were mere fantasies, a past-time that he enjoyed while laying with his head in Elliot’s lap, while the latter combed his hair with spindly fingers and they both looked out on the world from behind a barred window. Tristan was, in secret, happy with life at the Circle even if it was a lie, an oppressed life in imprisonment. Before he met Elliot, it had felt like he had settled for the life he had, because he had no other choice. Now, it felt like he had everything he needed right there, behind bars.

The days passed by, and Tristan felt himself changing, growing stronger and less frightened of the world itself. He had friends, he had Elliot and he had those – albeit rare – occasions when his whole world consisted of skin against skin, lips against lips and when he forgot about everything around him, because all that existed in the world were the two of them. He was happy. But nothing that seems too good to be true, can last forever.


	6. What once was (part three)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is part three of a retrospective perspective, spanning from Tristan's childhood until he is about nineteen years old (nine years earlier than the previous chapters).

It was an absurdly undramatic day. For years, Tristan would try to recreate that very day and the days leading up to it in his memory; the day that would unavoidably haunt him until he would finally rest at the side of the Maker. Time and again, he would find that the period of time that he so desperately wanted to remember down to the last detail, was so difficult to recreate because of its utter lack of significance, its lack of sense of impending catastrophe, of dread. Life just was. And then it was not anymore.

Tristan was called to his Harrowing a few months after Sadie, and he passed it with grace. Senior Enchanter Lydia was assigned as his mentor. She was a kind and patient – albeit strict – woman, that had a rather expensive air about her, as if every fabric and every product that had ever touched her skin or came into her vicinity, would have to uphold a very high minimum of class. Elliot and the others despised her for being a Chantry loyalist, but Tristan rather liked her. She reminded him of his mother. Lori, Thord, Ysendra, Elliot, Sadie and he were still breaking the fast together, eating supper together and seeing each other for purely social purposes from time to time, but the group became more and more loose in its foundations. Tristan had chosen to focus his studies on the creation school of magic, which meant that the only lectures he had in common with the rest of the group, were those that were mandatory for all mages. Outside of lectures, Tristan was mostly spending time with Elliot – he could hardly remember what life had been like before they met. Their relationship was still uncomplicated, still safe and still so natural, that he rarely pondered about it at all. It just was.

Outside the Ostwick Circle of Magi, the world began to show signs of life anew. The rays of sun that crept inside the Circle building were not harsh and unforgiving but warm, and they gently caressed the skin of mages who had been skilful or lucky enough to gain a chair by the window in the dining hall or the library. From the Circle’s barred windows, Tristan could see how all of nature awoke – small, gossamer buds sprang forth on the branches of the trees; fragile green leaves began to grow in the botanical gardens; fresh little strands of grass that reached out for the sun struggled their way out of the ground. The whole world seemed abuzz with the joy of life. It was a beautiful time.

A month after his Harrowing, Tristan received the first letter from home in a year. In his mother’s usual generous, curly handwriting he read the news that his father’s illness had worsened, that the yellow roses in the garden were seemingly surviving another year despite the harsh cold, and that one of the oldest of the family’s servants, Molras, had passed away. His mother had been very fond of Molras, an old elf with a timid approach and a talent for preparing the most exquisite meals. Tristan remembered that the elf had even made Nug-Nug – the Orlesian dish made of meat, rice and herbs that looked like a nug peeking out of its burrow – once, after the Trevelyan children had been in Val Royeaux with their parents. Molras had been a good man and Tristan knew that his mother would grieve for him, especially now that her husband was slowly dying. But the letter was written in a steady hand – his mother would never show weakness such as a shaking hand while putting quill to parchment, no matter the news it was delivering.

It was, all things considered, a peaceful time at the Ostwick Circle of Magi. Admittedly, many of the Senior Enchanters became rather lazy as the sun’s rays were getting warmer – which resulted in a few somewhat poorly prepared lectures – and many of the mages spent more time in the courtyard than necessary. Tristan, as per usual, spent most of his time indoors, in the library. His scholarly ambitions were high and his academical career was within reach – he could feel it. According to Senior Enchanter Lydia he could well be published within five years, if he continued on “the path of hard work and dedication”, which she liked to say with a scowl and her amber, hawk-like eyes fixing Tristan’s. She had even spoken about a temporary transfer to the Circle in Montsimmard for scholarly purposes – evidently, she knew the First Enchanter there. Tristan was torn between excitement and fear as he thought about the possibility of studying at one of the most prominent Circles in Orlais. On the one hand, he would have to leave the closest thing he would ever have to a home; on the other hand, leaving Ostwick’s Circle of Magi for a Circle in Orlais would be the closest he ever would come to being free, of leaving the bird-cage that provoked such conflicting emotions within him.

He was constantly reminded of why he could not possibly leave Ostwick, though. Montsimmard seemed ridiculous, pompous and unimportant every time he watched a warm ray of sunlight play upon Elliot’s pale skin, every time his fingertips brushed against the back of Elliot’s hand, every time he caught a glimpse of that gap between Elliot’s front teeth when he smiled. Of course, the thought had occurred to him, that their companionship might not last forever. They were young, bright minds confined to the same place for the rest of their lives, and there was no possibility of moving further in a relationship between mages. There would be no marriage, no children, no everyday life together, and not simply because of the fact that they were both mages.

If Tristan would not have shown any signs of magic, what would his life had been like? Most likely, he would have been a Chantry brother by now, or he would have been betrothed to the daughter of a minor nobleman – as the third son he would not be required to carry neither the family honour nor the lineage, but he would be expected to have a family if not committing to the Chantry. Tristan chose not to ponder much about what could have been. None of that mattered in the Circle, but there was still a possibility of Elliot and him finding it difficult to stick together when there was no natural next step in their relationship. Despite these thoughts occasionally passing by in Tristan’s mind, he felt it with his whole being that this was not the case for him and Elliot. After more than a year, they were still happy being silent in each other’s company, not knowing very much about each other and not caring about the others’ past. They shared each other’s burdens in silence.

Those months after Tristan’s Harrowing, in the nascent warmth, in the still and quiet, were nothing out of the ordinary. If there had been any signs, any clues to what would come, they had been hiding well.

Tristan awoke at the fifth hour, the sun tentatively stretching its thin fingers through the small oval windows by the roof in his quarters, allowing them to dance softly across his face. He went through his usual morning routine, washing in the copper bowl by the bed, gathering his chestnut hair in a strict knot, and looking over his mages’ robes for creases or stains. The corridors were quite still when he slowly paced through them towards the great hall, pulling the fur jacket closer around his shoulders – despite the weather starting to get warmer, the early morning chill still lingered in the old Circle building. Not many of the Circle’s inhabitants were moving around just yet, but Tristan had always liked this part of the day, when everything was quiet, and he was alone. As he reached the great hall, the Templars who stood watch outside the doors nodded curtly.   
“Good morning, Trevelyan. Early riser as usual.”   
“Good morning, Ser Harris, Ser Karolyn. As are you”, Tristan gave a small smile and strode towards his usual spot to break the fast.   
None of his friends had arrived yet, which did not surprise him much. Sadie was either sleeping or manically trying to finish some paper or other before deadline. Lori was probably in the library already, Thord was likely sleeping, while Ysendra usually made her rounds at the botanical gardens first thing in the morning. Elliot could be anywhere, but would likely arrive to break the fast soon.

But Tristan broke the fast alone. One by one apprentices, mages and Enchanters started to drop into the dining hall, settling down for some grey porridge before starting their day. The hall started to fill up with noise – tired, excited, happy, sour and irritable voices drifted throughout the hall, echoing between the walls and mixing into one unidentifiable mass of sound. Tristan had an early lecture on healing magic and its application on non-lethal internal damage, and as soon as he had finished his porridge in solitude, he stalked away from the great hall towards the lecture halls.

He sat through the lecture, conscientiously made notes, asked Senior Enchanter Freya some question or other, and practised the spell taught paired with a quite sour apprentice he believed was Sadie’s old acquaintance from the dormitories, Linnea. He tried to politely, yet somewhat awkwardly, make conversation with her as they were practising, but she only replied sullenly with a “yes” or a “no”. His talent for healing was, to say the least, frugal, and the practise ended with Tristan possibly giving Linnea muscle cramps, for which she rewarded him with a disgusted sneer. On the way out of the lecture hall, he passed Elliot, who was going to attend the next lecture in the hall – a lecture about the Fade with Senior Enchanter Isera, who always lit up when Elliot was at her lectures, since he was such an interested student. In passing, their hands brushed against each other lightly and Elliot flashed him a gap-toothed smile that made Tristan’s skin tingle.   
“Will I see you later?”   
Elliot nodded as he passed into the lecture hall and raised his voice slightly to make himself heard over the chatter of the apprentices.   
“The usual spot!”, he half-shouted before disappearing into the fray.

It was, by all known variables, a regular day. After the midday meal, which Tristan consumed alone, he went to meet with Senior Enchanter Lydia. Her quarters were located in the north wing of the Circle, where all of the Enchanters had their private quarters and offices. The north wing of the Circle was noticeably more cared for than the east wing, where the apprentice and mages’ quarters were located. Long, splendidly woven carpets in different shades of reds and greens were spread out along the wooden floors of the corridors, the barred, triangular windows were inlaid with coloured glass, and the beeswax candles that gave light to the corridors were held by magnificent gold-plated candelabras that hung from the high ceiling. Tristan had walked through the northern corridors many times, but he had not yet lost the sense of wonder that filled him each time he set foot there. He climbed the two flights of stairs at the far north side of the wing to reach Senior Enchanter Lydia’s quarters. Upon reaching the grand, rustic oaken door, Tristan halted his steps and rapped his knuckles against it. He heard the Senior Enchanter’s voice from behind the door, brisk and polite.   
“Enter, please.”   
Tristan opened the door, which protested audibly as it swung on creaky hinges.   
“Senior Enchanter, good afternoon. I hope I do not interrupt?” He remained outside the doorstep, dipping his head slightly in greeting.   
“Not at all. Come on in, Trevelyan. Sit down, by all means, sit down. Would you like a tea biscuit? My dear friend Vivienne brought them for me the last time she visited, they’re from Orlais. I’m not particularly fond of them myself, but she claims that they’re some kind of delicacy. Please, take one.”   
The Senior Enchanter extended a smooth, olive-skinned hand, fingers wrapped around a delicate glass box filled with small biscuits. Her fingernails were long and polished to perfection. Tristan sat down in an ornately carved chair on the opposite side of the table and accepted the offer, but allowed the Orlesian delicacy, that smelled discreetly of cherries and cream, to rest on the table for the time being. Eating whilst speaking was something he had learned to avoid. The Senior Enchanter’s room was grand; the table they were seated at was made of a dark, polished wood that he did not recognize, but it gave an air of luxury to the workspace. The floors were covered in delicately woven carpets, quite unlike anything he had seen in the Free Marches. Behind the Senior Enchanter hung a tapestry with a dragon-motif, and the remaining walls were adorned with tasteful paintings in gold-plated, ornate frames – he recognized Val Royeaux on one of them and Ostwick on another, but the other motifs were of cities unknown to him. He had been to Val Royeaux once, as a child, and could not remember that he had ever seen anything as beautiful, before or after. In the far-right corner of the room, a drape made of red velvet hung, separating the office space from what he assumed was the Senior Enchanter’s private quarters. The room was beautiful, the very image of the kind of luxury that he associated with Orlais rather than the Free Marches. It stood in stark contrast to the rest of the Circle building, which had a more rustic feel to it. Senior Enchanter Lydia smiled slightly, her amber eyes resting upon him. Tristan had dreaded this day, since the Senior Enchanter was the last person he wanted to disappoint. She had taken him on with warmth and enthusiasm since she took him under her wing, taken more interest in him than what was required of a mentor. He wished that she would see how grateful he was for that, despite the fact that he had to let her down.   
“My, my”, she said with a smile, “the amount of anguish you come carrying, it must weigh heavily on your shoulders. Don’t look so stunned, I’ve mentored a fair share of young mages and I have learned to read most quite well, if I dare say so myself.”   
She studied him quizzically, her facial expression as calm and composed as always. The Senior Enchanter gracefully hooked a strand of raven hair behind her ear and paused, but when Tristan opened his mouth to speak, she silenced him with a slight gesture of her hand.   
“Before you turn Montsimmard down – I suspect that is what you came here to do – humour me for a while, will you? Terrific. I am not fully aware of the reasons for your hesitation, but I can make an educated guess. I will spare us both the humiliation of speculating out loud, however. I will, however, ask you this: how do you picture your life? Forward, I mean.”   
Senior Enchanter Lydia leaned back slightly in her chair, awaiting the reply courteously. Tristan was not startled by the question, neither by his mentor’s straightforwardness – he had experienced it before. Despite having pondered the answer to her question quite a lot – was that not the very essence of why he had decided not to go to Montsimmard? – he found it difficult to reply.   
“I… There are not many options, are there? This is my home, and it will remain my home until my last day.”   
The reply was more cynical, more rudely melodramatic than he had intended. Nonetheless, it was the truth, albeit put quite harshly.   
“That is possible, indeed. I notice you do not spit on those words like some of your friends do, you are torn between resentment towards your life here, then, and a feeling of safety and gratitude? Yes, that is common at your age, I would say. So then, your life will be lived in the Circle, you are aware of that, but what do you wish for it to be, within the Circle’s walls? I have told you before: if you want it, you will have a splendid academic career, you will likely be Senior Enchanter within fifteen, twenty years. With your name and your excellent mind and scholarly ambition, you might even become First Enchanter. Although, if you want that life, you cannot allow yourself to be held back.”   
Senior Enchanter Lydia’s brow was knit, her voice barely noticeably harsher than usual. She was a woman who knew to keep up appearances, to not be overwhelmed with emotion. Tristan made an effort not to let any of the confusion show in his facial expression, but almost as if by magic, the Senior Enchanter seemed to understand all of the conflicting thoughts that spiralled through his head. When she spoke again, her alto voice was lower, warmer.   
“I understand your hesitation, Trevelyan. All I ask is that you consider this: your title, your publications, your academic successes – that will be what both opens the world to you and that shields you from ill-will and harm. Some will admittedly see you as a threat, some will feel jealousy towards you, but your achievements will gain you access to things you will never have as a common Circle mage. Your accomplishments will last, but sadly, what you cherish now might not. Routine, familiarity, friends, lovers – those things will be in constant motion. You are too young to have experienced that yet, but I am not. Think about what I have said and come back next week. If you still want to turn the offer down, I will let you without giving you a lecture first.”   
The smile the Senior Enchanter offered was mostly playful – but Tristan thought that he, for a moment, hinted a slight sadness in her eyes.   
“Very well, Senior Enchanter. I will do as you say. Thank you for your time.”   
She nodded slightly, returning to the letter she seemingly had been composing before he entered her quarters. As Tristan exited the room, his thoughts were rushing in all directions at once. The Senior Enchanter really believed in him, that he could accomplish great things. And despite the anxious tendrils that grasped at his heart and squeezed when he thought about what he had to leave behind to accomplish what the Senior Enchanter saw the future hold for him, he assumed that she might be – at least partly – right.

Tristan was too restless and preoccupied with _on the one hand… but on the other hand…_ to leave the little room in the far west of the library wing to have supper. When he had arrived at the conclusion that he would at least discuss Montsimmard with Elliot and Sadie, the light that crept into the cramped little room from the window was that of dusk. The beeswax candle on the table in front of him flickered as he let out a sigh while carefully redirecting a strand of hair into the neat knot at the back of his head. After all those years they had known each other, Tristan had learned to recognize Sadie’s footsteps – she dragged her feet slightly behind her, as if her body did not entirely want to go where her mind was headed.   
“Sadie”, he sighed while tracing the back of a large, leather-bound tome on the table with his index-finger, “I need your help with something. Senior Enchanter Lydia has offered me a temporary transfer to the Circle in Montsimmard. I-“   
Sadie’s footsteps had halted behind him, but he could hear her breathing, quite shakily. He turned around to look at her, and he could feel his heart skipping a beat. The long, copper-red hair fell over Sadie’s slender shoulders, her whole body somehow seeming smaller than usual; freckled fists clenched tightly across her chest, back hunched slightly as if she was freezing cold. Her lips were pale and pressed into a thin line, and the freckles on her face burned alike little pieces of amber against the sickly pale skin, eyes wild and wide like bottomless pits. Tristan stood up so hastily that the chair he had sat on almost fell over, the creaking against the wooden floor shrieking loudly in the otherwise quiet room. He hurried to Sadie, instinctively wanting to hold her – she looked so small and sickly, very much like a child – but settling for placing his hands on her upper arms. He could feel that she was shivering, and his heart struggled to escape the dreading fear, wanting to rip its way out of his body by force.   
“Sadie, what-“   
Her lips started shivering, eyes filling up slightly with tears, but he could see that she was trying to compose herself.   
“Tristan, I…”, she refused to look at him, not bothering with wiping away the tears that streamed down her cheeks. “Tristan, please, I… I don’t-“, she inhaled shakily and finally looked up at him, her eyes filled with dread. “Tristan, Elliot is dead. He was called to his Harrowing today. He didn’t make it.”   
And then, the world broke.


End file.
